Cooking Through Grandma’s Vintage Recipes: Dill Pickles

My grandma has quite a few recipes for pickles, relish, green tomato relish, and Spanish pickles (pickles with tomatoes). But all of them, save one, are for sweet pickles. I could only find one straight dill pickle recipe in the bunch, and it was very unclear–it didn’t have any amount of cucumbers needed or any spices. Grace loves dill pickles and wanted to make some, so she modified my grandma’s recipe to make it her own.

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Here’s the bare bones starting point. Grace used my grandma’s recipe, plus the recipe (and canning instructions) from this website Tiaras and Tantrums Kosher Dill Pickle Recipe

She washed and cut the cucumbers

Then smashed some garlic cloves

Put two garlic cloves and some pieces of dill in each quart jar

Then combined the salt, sugar, and spices in a pot to make the brine

Put the cucumbers in the jars

Then fill the jars with brine. She did have to remake her brine three times to fill up her jars. I think it’s a learning curve with how much you will need.

Here’s the “after” shot.

Here’s a note: you don’t have to can pickles. They can be stored in the refrigerator for a few weeks. However, if you’re going to make a large batch like this one, you will likely lack room to store them in the refrigerator and canning allows you to keep them on the shelf for a longer period of time. You definitely want to do one or the other, it isn’t safe to leave non-canned pickles out on the shelf, they can develop bacteria and cause foodborne illness.

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